Chasing Winter {Part 3}

Good morning Lovelies. Boy! What a week. It certainly has been huge and to be honest, I am doing well to get this post done. You may have seen on my Instagram stories that I helped a friend with her daughter’s wedding last weekend. It was the cutest ‘Brambly Hedge’ country wedding and I was honoured to be a part of the styling, set up and desserts. Keep an eye out for photos.

I arrived home with tired feet, a creatively satisfied heart and a van chocked full of props and cake stands on Sunday night. By Monday night, which happened to be hubby and Miss Charlotte’s birthdays, our oldest daughter had invited around 15 delightful friends over for dinner. This began a week of flurry with twenty something year olds buzzing around our home, bunking on lounges, playing games with the girls, sitting around the fire,  surfing, eating and being totally grateful for our open home.  By the end of it I lost track of all of the new faces and just kept offering a pillow and blanket to whoever turned up.

As you can imagine, there wasn’t  a whole lot of spare time to gather my thoughts and create blog posts. But you know what? How precious is it when your kids want to bring their friends home to hang out, eat and crash at your place, even when they are twenty one and live ten hours away. My mother heart certainly treasured this little gift. And yes, it does help that we live in paradise! It’s a pretty special part of our country we are blessed to call home. 

As much as I love my coastal dwelling, it’s the wide brown land that has my heart and one of my favourite places is a tiny village near the town I grew up. It can actually snow here and would be my top choice for a winter get away.  On our recent mini road trip I took my extended family here for the day and had the most delightful time wandering the streets with my camera in hand. 

I don’t know much of the history of Nundle, but there is an old wool mill there where you can still see production of the most gorgeous wool in the historic factory.

Whenever I walk through city streets or the quaintest country town, I am always noticing the shapes, lines and textures of buildings around me. I cannot help but crouch to ground level or point my camera up to get an interesting photo. Street photography fascinates me, as you can see here on a trip to Melbourne I took with two of my taekwondo kids a couple of years ago. Even though this sweet little town only has one main street, it hides a wealth of interesting old buildings and eclectic shops.

Something else that fascinates me is old dilapidated buildings. Every time I see one along the road I immediately want to stop and trudge through barbed wire fences and photograph them.This is something I rarely get to do with a very practical hubby and a van full of children, but on our glorious drive to Nundle this day I was incredibly grateful to my car full of relies who recognised my creative spirit and encouraged me to pull over and enjoy these amazing old pieces of history. I particularly enjoyed a row of slap shod mail boxes lining a dusty street in the middle of nowhere. Oh, if they don’t scream out ‘Australia’, then I don’t know what does! The small delights. 

I was away for a week, and with only three of the girls with me, I had a little breathing space to do something different and wander my part of the world with my camera in hand. It was so good to slow down, take time, stop along the roadside and take a good look at what makes our beautiful country so unique. I hope you didn’t mind my detour and I am looking forward to sharing  more cake with you all next week. 

Lots of love xx